KCRW Celebrates Summer With A Pie A Day

And if our Pie Week isn't enough for you, how about a new pie every day?

EVAN KLEIMAN, BYLINE: I said that I was going to make a pie a day all summer. Everybody's ears pricked up.

MONTAGNE: Evan Kleiman is the host of GOOD FOOD, a program from member station KCRW in Santa Monica.

KLEIMAN: All my producers at the radio station said: You know, you really have to do this now. And I just started. And it was sort of this free-flowing thought process of I would make a pie, and then I would criticize it.

MONTAGNE: Now, for the fourth summer in a row, Kleiman is getting ready to make a daily pie. She'll post recipes and photos of her pies online, including her failures.

KLEIMAN: The worst example was what I now refer to as the shrinking toupee pie, where I made a meringue. It looked absolutely beautiful sitting atop the lemon filling. And then as the day wore on, it kept shrinking, shrinking, shrinking until finally, there was just this little bit of fluff in the center of the pie. It looked like a balding man.

MONTAGNE: Hmm. Well, we asked Evan Kleiman: Why pie?

KLEIMAN: Cooking and baking, for a lot of us, is something that we do that creates a Zen moment, like an island in the craziness of life. I think David Mamet has been quoted saying: "Stress cannot exist in the presence of pie."

MONTAGNE: Evan Kleiman is the host of KCRW's GOOD FOOD. This summer's pie-a-day project kicks off tomorrow and goes through the first week of September.

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MONTAGNE: This is NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.